I am working on a study that sends people a PDF document with information about their health. The team would like to know if the person has actually opened the PDF document (a sign that they didn't just ignore the e-mail). I know that it'd be possible to do it with a link to an external file, but the users are much less likely to click on a URL and download it then they are to just view an attachment, and we don't want to do anything that might prevent the users from reading the information (we've already had people say they never received the message, and with further investigation they discovered they had, they had just ignored it).
Another option is to request a read report, but this is only useful if it doesn't annoy the user (ie it does it automatically when the email is opened instead of requesting them to send one). We're currently looking into this as well, but the ability to check if the attachment has been opened is a much better idea.
The email is generated in MS SQL and sent using the database mail system, and we have adobe acrobat pro, so creating scripts in pdfs is possible (although I'm not sure whether those scripts will be allowed to run).
Thanks
1) Dont include the PDF in the email, include a link to the PDF.
or
2) Include a javascript snippet in the PDF, which hits a per-user URL or includes IP address or something to track. This will only work if the user allows javascript, and if their pdf reader supports it.
See
http://ask.metafilter.com/153206/Is-it-possible-to-track-where-a-PDF-file-goes-once-in-the-wild
Since this was originally posted there has been a number of consumer tools that now let you track PDF's sent via a web link.
http://docsend.com , http://attach.io
and if you're sharing from Dropbox
http://orangedox.com
Much easier than having to script it yourself
At this time there are a number of tools available who offer attachment tracking service to their users. I am also using SalesHandy for attachment tracking and get the deep analysis of when & where your attachment is open.
Click to read more: https://www.saleshandy.com/document-tracking/
Related
I understand that similar questions have been asked before on Stack Overflow and all over the internet, but my situation is a bit unique. Let me give some context:
I want to make a macro/program that automatically downloads attachments sent from a set of emails (according to date) in a specific folder on the Outlook Web App. The only issue is that this is for my workplace, and the IT department is refusing to give me the password for the outlook account which makes it difficult to sync up the Web App to the on desktop application (I am a pharmacy student who works at a Chemist Warehouse and I'm just doing this as a local pet-project because lockdown is making me bored, it would not be used for all stores).
I have come up with an idea for the solution, essentially I want to use the urlmon ability of VB.Net to download the attachment as a file from the web. I was thinking if I could put a Web Browser control on the form, make it invisible and when the program loads up it automatically goes to the store email (I can get the url), to the appropriate folder. I then want to be able to read the HTML content perhaps? and then download any and all attachments in all emails received today for example in that folder.
I understand this is a unique and weird situation, so any help is much appreciated. If there are any further questions please feel free to ask and I will answer to the best of my ability.
Thanks in advance :)
This issue has been solved now. I used the Selenium Web Driver, integrated it to VB.NET and then used it to scrape the email. Feel free to comment if you wanna know how I did it. I'm gonna close this question thread now :)
I have a client who wants me to automate certain document processing work.
There is this pdf that can only be opened by sending in username and password to a DRM server.
When I open it using Acrobat, I see this.
I have the username and password, courtesy of the client.
Issue is how do I automate this?
I have done web scraping before, where I automate a web login so that I can execute certain routine tasks.
But this is the first time I am trying to automate an authentication that does not occur inside the browser.
How do I go about doing this?
Companies pay a lot of money to do exactly not this. http://www.adobe.com/devnet/reader/topic_drm.html. I suspect the amount of effort to do this will not be worth it, especially if you are going to try and dive into the actual protocols/plugins used and hook in directly. This would be very implementations specific and likely to break in the future.
Your best bet is to leverage the existing Adobe Application and wrap it in an Automator script. Unfortunately, OSX specific.
They won't have generic workflow hooks, so the quick and nasty way would be to just record yourself doing it once, and play it back time and time again.
Workflow:
Drag PDF onto custom app
Automatically populate username
Automatically populate password
If you are looking for somewhere to start: http://www.macosxautomation.com/automator/features/virtual-user.html
The DRM module itself can set permissions about how you can print and re-distribute the files itself, you won't be able to get around any of that, but assuming you have all the permissions set correctly, you should at least be able to automate opening the file itself on OSX.
I am trying to access from an MVC application, the OneDrive files from my office 365 account.
What I need is to give my application user the possibility to edit a .docx file, in their browser.
I used Office 365 APIs Preview, to get the list of files, and their properties, but I don't know how to allow the user to edit that file in his browser.
A solution to this problem could be to share the file with different user of my application, by creating a guest link.
From the office365 portal this is a simple task:
- OneDrive, select the file -> manage -> share with -> get a link, the link can have read only or read write rights.
I don’t know how to create this link from the APIs.
Can you please tell me how can I generate this guest link or if there is a different solution to this problem.
In short, I don't think this can be done in a supported way.
There is a real risk that if you figure out the URL structure, that the structure could change. I suggest that you make a feature request by using UserVoice. It would be preferable that the REST API and the client objects construct this URL for you.
With that said, if you take the sharing link, and place it into a browser window, the link will redirect to Word Online with the document in the browser. Take a look at the structure of the URL in the Word Online browser window. You could use that as a template, and along with the information from the File.Url property from the Office 365 API Preview, you may be able to put together a URL to that file. Expect that this approach would not be supported and would be subject to URL structure changes.
If other people find that this would be a useful feature, please use UserVoice to let us know.
I am exporting a document as a PDF. It is kept on a publicly accessibly website so that any users can download and read it. Now I want to track this. e.g. "How many times the PDF got opened."
Note that my question is not to track while I download, we need to track when the PDF is opened. Is there any kind of script that is invoked when the PDF is opened so that Adobe Acrobat Reader sends the details to my server?
These are the details I would like:
IP
Date/Time
Possbilly GEO Location.
Yes, you can probably do this. PDF includes a Javascript API, which some (but not all) PDF readers implement. I'm only certain of Acrobat and Foxit Reader doing this, and it can be turned off in both, for security and privacy reasons. That said, it's probably your best shot.
I glanced through the Javascript for Acrobat API Reference, and it looks like you could register for the "Page/Open" event (page 368 in my copy), and on receiving the first one of those, make a Net.HTTP call (page 548) to a web server you're running. That will get you the date/time and the public IP of the client reading the document, from which you can get a geolocation using a service like GeoIP.
I'm not sure this is possible. Although PDF can execute Javascript, reader software is naturally paranoid about malware being embedded in "benign" documents, so the execution context is quite restricted, with warnings shown about possible dangerous activity.
See previous SO question Can my PDF ping my server when it is opened?
What's the best way of sending an email with an image from the application to the Mail.app for someone to send to any contact they like?
For example, in my app (iMood), you can select a 'mood', I'd like the user to be able to email this to a friend for example, by using a button in the navigation bar.
I can easily create the button etc. but just need to know a way to enable the user to send the image (ie. image.png) from the project to Mail.app as maybe an attachment or a picture in the email.
Thanks in advance.
This question has been answered many times and in many different forms.
Short answer: you can't. There is no API that allows you access to Mail attachments, and Apple's implementation of the mail URL scheme does not support attachments either.
To accomplish this, you have a couple of very unattractive options:
1) Build-in your own SMTP client. There are some Open Source libraries that are working toward this, but it's still a pain
2) Send the image to a third part server (yours) and compose and send the mail from there. Users probably won't like the possibility you collecting email addresses for nefarious purposes.
In your case, the best thing to do is save the image to the Photo Library. From there, users can send email with the photo.
If you'd like to see Apple enable email attachments, please file a request.